Terence Tao's homepage has a link to a collection of quotes, and one among them was Hilbert's famous "We must know, we will know" quote. This quote also had an audio link to it. Now although I'm not sure if it is really Hilbert's voice in the link, this prompted me to ask if we could have a collection of (rare) audio/video recordings of mathematicians which are freely available on the internet.

Let me add, however, that I am not asking for audio/video recordings of mathematicians which are fairly recent (a typical example of which I am NOT asking for are TED talks or podcasts). Recordings of famous mathematicians of the early twentieth and mid twentieth century will be wonderful. (I've always wanted to find out how Von Neumann's voice sounded like!).

Addendum: Are there any videos or audio excerpts of any talks given by Grothendieck which are available anywhere? I'd be grateful if anyone could post any such links. Thanks in advance.

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The wire recording is a bit murky; here is my best-effort transcript of the short excerpt:

"Those of you present who have lived with this field, and who have lived with and suffered with computing machines of various sorts, and know what kind of regime it is to invest in one, I'm sure have appreciated the fact that it appears that this machine has been completely assembled less than two months ago, has been run on problems less than two weeks ago, and yesterday already ran for four hours without making a mistake. Those of you who have not been exposed to computing machines, and who do not have the desolate feeling which goes with living with their mistakes, will appreciate what it means that a computing machine, after about two weeks of breaking in, has really a faultless run of four hours. It is completely fantastic on an object of this size; I doubt it has ever been achieved before, and it is an enormous reassurance regarding the state of the art and regarding the complexities to which one will be able to go in the future, that this has been achieved."

Here is the BibTeX reference to a printed version (which differs slightly from the speech).

After hearing this I have to say that Peter Sellers did actually a very good performance in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".
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Daniel PapeMar 16 '11 at 9:56

Actually, even more reminiscent of Peter Sellers, is a film of Werner von Braun, circa mid-1950s, discussing orbiting nuclear-armed space stations ... I've watched this film at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, but (sadly) I have no recording of it.
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John SidlesMar 16 '11 at 22:21

I recall many years ago a TV program on Von Neumann. (Maybe in the NOVA series?) They said they scoured the world for film and found only one instance showing Von Neumann. When he was on the Atomic Energy Commission. The film showed him with many others at a publicity event in the control room of a nuclear reactor, I think.
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Gerald EdgarMay 11 '11 at 15:34

Jean Dieudonné, Bourbaki secretary and author of the nine-volume "Foundations of Modern Analysis" giving an interview on french television about his book "Pour l'honneur de l'esprit humain : les mathématiques aujourd'hui":

Unfortunately, it does not show Grothendieck "in mathematical action", but quite the contrary:
In 1972, he hosted a conference at CERN entitled "Allons nous continuer la recherche scientifique?/Will we continue scientific research?"

in which Russell talks with a medical student who is proposing to do research on atom bomb survivors in Japan.

(The Hindi voiceover during the interview just repeats what they're saying in English. In the 30 seconds before Russell appears, the dialogue roughly translates as "A letter from Bertrand Russell! Gee whiz!"

Addendum: Are there any videos or audio excerpts of any talks given by Grothendieck which are available anywhere? I'd be grateful if anyone could post any such links. Thanks in advance.

Actually, several lecture courses by Grothendieck have been recorded but afaik not available online. Maybe you can make a FOI request if you are really interested---the copyright is by University of Buffalo so hopefully subject to Freedom of Information Act.

Here is a long video about Richard Courant. Apparently he was one of the first people to own a video camera so there is some really old footage of some of the fathers of modern mathematics. If you scroll to 33:00, you will find footage of David Hilbert shoveling snow!

There is also a video tape of an interview of Laurent Schwartz made by the École polytechnique in 1995 (it is not available online but can be purchased here). It contains, among others, a short video extract from a lecture he gave (long ago) to the Polytechnique students. His enthusiast lecturing style is remembered by many, if not all, students from these times.

While he's not exactly a mathematician, there is on Youtube a wealth of Richard Feynman lectures and interviews. My personal favourite is part of the "The Character of Physical Law" Messenger Lectures at Cornell, titled the distinction of past and future. (Though, really, all the Messenger lectures are amazing.)

The 1984 BBC Horizon documentary, A mathematical mystery tour, evidently re-edited and re-aired as a PBS Nova documentary, features a number of famous mathematicians as talking heads, including Atiyah, Dieudonné, and Erdős. But in particular, it features René Thom, who can be seen here walking a fine line between conceding Bourbaki's utility and still damning it with faint praise.

I found the video recording of The Atle Selberg Memorial
which was held at the IAS a few years back. There is an "archival clip" of Selberg at the IAS included in the same page. This may be the same video which others have already posted. I apologize if it is. Nevertheless, the video recording of the memorial should be of interest.

Also, here is an interview (in PDF format) of his wherein he discusses the dispute arising from the Prime Number Theorem and his trace formula among other things. It makes for a very good reading over a cup of steaming hot coffee.

In this interview, John H. Conway is interviewed by Chaim Goodman-Strauss for the "Math Factor". The interview mainly focusses on Conway's long time collaboration with the legendary Martin Gardner. Only audio.

http://www.ted.com At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot
develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme
complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order
within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.